December 3, 2009

Ray Stevens: A low-budget Collection

All-Time Hits is the title of a low-budget cassette/CD release from 1996. The sound is excellent. A lot of times people see "low-budget" and think the sound is terrible but to my ears it's great!! Low-budget in this scenario, I feel, means that the price wasn't as high as other products. It was issued on the Polygram label, which at the time was associated with Mercury Records. Polygram still may be a subsidiary of Mercury...with record labels morphing and attaching onto each other on an almost monthly to semi-monthly basis it's never easy to tell if a subsidiary is still affiliated with a label or if it's been taken over by another label, etc etc. Anyway, at the time of the release, Polygram was associated with Mercury Records and because of this a bulk of the recordings on here come from Ray's tenure with that label. I'm sure I've written about this collection at some point...I've written so many blog entries even I tend to forget what I've written about.

I own both the cassette and CD version. Some may ask why? Well...once upon a time whenever you'd go to a Wal*Mart or a K-Mart music section there would be a section for CD's and a section for cassettes. The CD at the time was way more expensive than the cassette counterpart. This was true for the vinyl album...it became cheaper than the cassette because labels marked up the price on whatever was selling. Each successive technology would be more expensive than the previous product and so when CD's became the dominate music form, cassette's became cheaper. Following me so far? Well, back in 1996 when this collection was released, I didn't want to spend the money for a CD...so instead I bought the cassette. Fast-forward quite a few years...like say 2003...

I came across a CD version of All-Time Hits which featured 3 additional songs that weren't on the cassette copy I have. Cassettes were still being manufactured and in stores but CD's were becoming less expensive. MP3's were eclipsing the physical CD in buyer popularity. So...with the CD becoming less expensive compared to 3 or 4 years earlier, I started buying CD versions of my cassette collections. I also learned during this time that some of my cassettes didn't have a CD version...so I couldn't upgrade to CD with everything...

Anyway...this collection of Ray Stevens material features chart hits chosen at random, pretty much. The cassette, as I mentioned, features 8 songs and the CD adds 3 more to the line-up.

The eight songs that appeared only on the cassette are featured in different sequential order than they appear on the CD. For example, on the cassette version "Shriner's Convention" is song #5 but here on the CD it's song #11. A bulk of the recordings are for Mercury Records with the exception of songs #9 and #11. Those songs were recorded for RCA Records.

Some purists may take exception to the title of this collection because the phrase "All-Time Hits" would indicate that the songs will in fact be an artist's "all-time hits". In that respect the title would be mis-leading because it doesn't include anything he recorded in the late '60s on into the mid '70s, which are considered his biggest years on the pop charts and when he had his biggest hit songs. However, the material that's spotlighted is still top-notch and all but one song made the popularity charts. The only song here that didn't achieve a chart position is "Butch Babarian" but it was issued as a commercial single, even though it didn't chart. Including non-hit singles isn't a pet peeve of mine as it might be to purists out there. In my way of thinking the inclusion of non-hit songs on a "hits" collection gives the song exposure that it otherwise may not receive and I'm all for that. The more exposure Ray's songs get, both the past and present material, the better...you always want to expose your material to each new audience that comes along.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

I'm a big fan of what's called classic country music. I love the HEE-HAW television program and I like watching vintage cartoons. I have four blogs...the main one is devoted to Ray Stevens. My Ray Stevens blog is written from a fan's perspective. The opinions and expressions discussed in this blog are of my own creation and should not be taken as representation of Ray Stevens and his office staff. I'm simply a dedicated, though opinionated, fan of Ray's who likes discussing his music and career. This fan-created blog page is something that I started when I got fed up with the lack of accurate information about Ray Stevens that was circulating on the internet.

2012

The Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music became available on February 28th; It's an impressive set featuring 9-CD's and a booklet; There are 108 recordings altogether and the booklet gives in-depth detail about each of the songs and their impact on society; Ray covers practically all the major comedy/novelty songs that have been recorded over the last 60 plus years; It's a marvelous collection!!

2014

Ray's memoir, Nashville, is a great book! If you don't have a copy I suggest you purchase one...any fan of Ray Stevens should get this book.

2016

Ray's recording, "Dear America", demonstrates that America is still the greatest country on Earth regardless of internal conflicts and imperfections; A loving tribute to the country and a defiant plea that the country's values and traditions should still continue to be championed and fought for; Excellent recording!

2017

Season One DVD of Ray's television series; It contains the first 13 episodes broadcast on local PBS stations from earlier this year; These episodes originally aired on RFD-TV but they were repeated on PBS stations starting this past January; Some local PBS stations aired all 26 episodes from the RFD run while other local PBS stations aired the first 13 episodes and then began airing the PBS exclusives which became available over the summer months; Future DVD releases are expected.

2017

Season Two of the Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville series; This volume consists of episodes guest starring the likes of Bill Anderson, Con Hunley, Williams and Ree, Leroy Van Dyke, and many more!! A perfect companion to Season One; Each season contains 13 half hour episodes.

2018

The Ray Stevens CabaRay Showroom officially opened to the public on January 18, 2018; This date is signifcant in the career of Ray Stevens in that it's the date he arrived in Nashville in 1962; The facility houses an entire array of entertainment from the main showroom to a piano bar, a gift shop, and it also houses his recording studios for audio and video productions; The upcoming Sixth Season of his PBS television series, CabaRay Nashville, is being taped at the showroom; These episodes represent the first to be taped at the venue.